Matches from 1981

[pantherwagner]

AJW, 1981, maybe 1982 - Mimi Hagiwara vs. Nancy Kumi

Let's start a Mimi Hagiwara review the same way Manzerman or most creepy fucks would, talking about her bath suit. Does this make me a creepy fuck? Hagiwara usually looks way too skinny in her usual white outfits, and I'm not a fan of the Kate Moss kind of build, but the rainbow outfit makes her look much nicer. Anyway, Kumi is one of the few wrestlers of the Pairs-Era (every tag team but one -Queen Angels- were called Something Pair... she was in the Golden Pair with Victoria Fujimi) and one of female wrestlers from those days with better fundamentals. They worked a mostly technical match, which is always a nice break from the action/brawl AJW style. Actually the pacing for this was sorta like a Mid Atlantic juniors match, with plenty of matwork and some basic, but cool highspots in between (like a sunset flip into a lateral headscissor takedown or something of the like). It helped the crowd was into it.

 

Hagiwara continues to be much better than she has any right to. At this point I have Kumi in an hypothetical workers list somewhere below the top of the era (Yokota, Sato, Ikeshita, Masami, Kai) but better than most other Japanese. Probably just right to Aoyama. I rarely watch the Ginnetty Joshi tapes in order, so I guess I'll have to check more Kumi matches vs. different workers.